Interdimensional Games Inc.

Consortium: The Tower Early Access ALPHA 1.5 is live. Lots of bug fixes and general gameplay and content improvements and polish. Estimated amount of gameplay for Act 1 is 15-20 hours viewforum.php?f=157

So this version is mostly a big bug fixing and existing content/mechanics polishing and revision patch based on all of the feedback from new players that have dived in as well as our backers of course.

The next update (roughly two weeks from now, other than potential earlier hotfixes) will include a roadmap to game completion.

We hope you all enjoy the new build!!

BIG UPDATES

[Update] When the AI is busy with their AR/VR HUD, their sight and sound sensing abilities are now significantly lowered, making it easier to sneak up on and around them.
[Update] Soldiers and turrets will now fight each other if they come into range of each other.
[Update] Front end Universe Log now functional! As you die or otherwise terminate your universe, a series of log will be formed and can be accessed anytime from the “Load Universe” menu.
[Update] Tutorial system fully reworked, resulting in a lot of fixes and improvements across the board - please let us know if you see any issues with them as as result.
[Update] iDGi-1 HUD color scheme changed again. Covers more items now. The old C1 bright green scheme should be completely gone now.
[Update] The two main Tower elevator shafts (Tower A and B) are no longer dead-ends.
[Update] Major change to how organ damage works. Damage times are more spread out, utility drain amounts changed. Chances of getting critical organ damage reduced.
[Update] Lots of art polish and fixes, AI patrolling and turret gameplay and performance improvements made to Lobby level.
[Update] Ambient light improvements across most levels in the game. Environments have more contrast now.

UPDATES

[Update] On loading, previously killed or incapped combatants that have been fully looted will no longer load. Skirts around several issues. (thx to FordGT90Concept)
[Update] New front-end game options: Invert mouse control and Play Tutorials on/off.
[Update] Fast forward is now “Press and Hold”.
[Update] New Career record stats! Health and Stealth related stats can now be accessed anytime.
[Update] Lowered fan wind strength in lower vent maze fan traps. It is now possible to escape traps with super jumps and freefall suit.
[Update] Public opinion can no longer increase, if the player has reached a Public Opinion rating of 0.
[Update] Rebalanced EM yields from turret armor chunks and many element containers.
[Update] Utility energy will automatically be vented to make room for items when performing inventory related item swaps with hot keys.
[Update] Overview in ending screen now displays a few things, notably how the universe stream ended.
[Update] You can now start repairing things by clicking and dragging broken items onto the repair button
[Update] New tutorial added for save spheres and for talking to calm down aggro’ed soldiers.
[Update] Keys for “Quickload” and “Quicksave” changed to Load Universe (can do this anytime), and Save Universe (can only perform this within a save sphere).
[Update] Ledges added into elevator shaft vent holes to vastly improve ease of navigation
[Update] AI fire grenades much more often now
[Update] Extreme temperature compensation Utility Energy drain rates re-balanced. Takes a little more energy to compensate for the Rooftop blizzard now.
[Update] CEAR laser made less OP. Still very powerful.
[Update] Yellow transponders can now be found on some mercs in the Lobby
[Update] Streaming door crosshair contexts made clearer
[Update] Made assault blasters more rare
[Update] Weapons can no longer be equipped if broken
[Update] If an AI soldier falls off the Tower, the player is now only blamed for the death if they are less than half their health or stamina.
[Update] Effects for mysterious robot appearing improved.
[Update] Upped the yield of recyclable cache left by The Voice for XO-1ed Bishops
[Update] Ladders now give an additional forward push, instead of just a vertical boost. No more repeat ladder hopping.
[Update] Missing automap sections added on Roof.

FIXES

[Fix] Fixed a major bug that would cause the gameworld to not properly reset to the saved version when loading right after dying
[Fix] Fixed alignments increases/decreases not showing properly on the UI, and certain alignment indications being ignored completely.
[Fix] Fixed alignments not saving/loading
[Fix] E mass recycling no longer also gobbles up items, only R mass recycling does that
[Fix] Fixed a bug where switching weapons while tasing an enemy would screw up the logic of what weapon was equipped.
[Fix] Fixed a logic bug where fast-forwarding through the Voice scene would leave the player's controls locked, as if they were still in Quantum Limbo
[Fix] Fixed a bug where mashing start could allow the player to start the game before the level had really finished settling - resulting in some script getting out of sync.
[Fix] Fixed Odin breaking badly in various ways when encountering him
[Fix] Fixed a bug where, with some fiddling, you could get Elon's chest to accept 2 different Assault Blasters. Now, it will accept the first Blaster it can get. If the player doesn't like that choice, they can pull it out, drop it, and then put in the correct Blaster. Elon will react accordingly.
[Fix] Automap labelling fixes, and Automap can no longer become unhinged and roll out of control.
[Fix] Getting into combat in TopExt will now properly stop the first conversation with the soldier.
[Fix] Fixed specific instance where AI in park could get stuck inside a wall (thx to FanaticTentacle)
[Fix] Hotel room numbers fixed - huge broken letters gone.
[Fix] BUS jump controls fixed to match Freefall suit.
["Fix"] Attempted fix for bug where would on occasion, be a snowstorm inside a building on load. Root cause, and problem in itself, was not determined, but solution should fix it regardless. Please let us know if this problem still occurs for you!
[Fix] Fix made to elevator in lobby so it can get up to the roof as it should
[Fix] Now every single last convo Odin has will now be properly terminated upon initiating combat with him.
[Fix] Preben and his goons will now properly ignore the player until they are talked to.
[Fix] Fixed an uncommon bug where Odin's goons would not be assigned to him.
[Update] When approaching Odin and his goons, their agitation no longer climbs as fast as it previously did if they had not talked to anyone beforehand.
[Fix] Fixed issue in Hotel Lower where two streaming doors were too close to each other and could cause the level the player is in to stream out (call out to WILL-E for making a video of the issue and letting us know!)
[Fix] Elevator button context fixes
[Fix] Various crosshair context fixes - should no longer be stuck on or just not function at all.
[Fix] Recyclable placement fixes throughout multiple levels.
[Fix] Fixed various issues that existed with the transition between the WaterHub and Lobby level.

Nothing happens so long time. I just guessed to try ConvoManager, there was 2 topics, i talked with the Voice about VXY and Security Turrents and then light turned off and the plane was destroyed...what was happened??? Also, when you get XO1 and immediately get to Zenlil...i supposed i have the choice.

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topics with Voice, but they are from other people - R25 and R9

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3) If you go into the options, you can press ESC and game will continue! But interface of options will stand stlll and cursor disappears! After ESC again, you can press Close and quit from this menu.

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4) Jail of the Tower, after meeting with Keiran-looking enemy

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5) Heard the sound of appearing and disappearing the turrent, but i didn't see it...just it's hide from me...afraid of me, i think )

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6)Interference of weapons and other objects

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7)Strange shaft in vents after dealing with turrets after jail in Tower. Auto-map shows nothing(

I'm a technical designer for the Tower currently working on bug fixes for the coming 1.2 release. It seems that you uncovered one of the 'unusual objects' in the game, one that was inside an underwater maze. You posted a screenshot, but it seems like you couldn't do anything with it? That suggests to me a bug of some sort, because you can get a small missions, and use those objects to your benefit. Can you describe to me what you did when you found the object? Could you not interact with it at all? You just got the '2121212121212121212121' message?
Had you been saving and loading your game beforehand? Could you provide us with a save file? If there is a bug, we could nail down the exact problem in our developing environment.

Thanks for any response,
I'll post this message on both the forums, and in your Private Messages so you can find it easier.

Imported save at the beginning, K15 starts doing her speech. That's all well and good but the way R25 randomly interjects into the dialog without context strikes me as very odd. I don't know if it matters but this is a save where P32 was revealed and captured. I wish the game had more of the CG1 events here. Not the actual jumping events but the R25 dialog saying "his freeflight suit is attracting the lightning." The way it is now, the opening lacks a lot of context and even those aware of the context, the R25 interjection is still weird.

Tower 3 (high above hoverpad), the three guards at the top here are still a problem:
-The most obvious issue is that the shielded guy does a 180 on load so instead of looking out to space, he's looking at Tower 1 (VXY antenna tower).
- The guy that goes to the outside corner towards Tower 1 ran into the chair and got stuck in the middle.
- The two walking guys like to run into each other at the opposite corner of the tower above.
-The one that goes up the ramp and looks towards Tower 4 (yellow transponder elevator) doesn't stop at the end of that route, he turns around and comes back immediately. A good opportunity to get him quickly vanishes.

I hit F5 in the save zones as a force of habit. Is there any chance of making F5 also save like F8 does if F5 has no other function in a save zone?

The guy at the base of Tower 4 closest to Tower 2 often gets stuck on the table/has weird patrol pattern.

"Time Suspicious" might be counting up like kills were before. That is to say, it's not properly saved/loaded. It just keeps going up and up and up even if a load should have reset it. Not that it really matters... Also not 100% it is broke because supicion is kind of weird to me in the first place...

On Tower 2, approaching from Tower 4, the ladder that goes from about midway up the tower to the floor where there's like 5-6 guys patrolling, I got stuck on the top of it. I ended up flying to get off it. Luckily no one was within earshot of me.https://youtu.be/xyCrP17osbc

SOS morse code conversation cut off the CMC conversation I was having about the freefall suit.

Red text on load after Elon Stone has been incap'd:

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Closed game to desktop, started it, loaded save. Roof is now populated with all of the mercs again, sans Elon Stone. Never left the roof. Attaching save.

I loaded again, went to SOS spot, hit talk anywhere button. And I see this. First option doesn't make sense, second does. This is from loading the attached save as well.

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Can't really do F2 and follow through with it because of the aforementioned bug where all the mercs respawned...

Deleted saves aren't actually deleted from the file system. Game just loses reference to them.

No way to tell which universe# folder matches up with the name given in the game. I only know in this case because it's the most recent. Yeah, yeah, you can read it in meta.txt but should say somewhere in the UI that it is "universe14."

I have the button to see the alignments set to Page Down. The length of the string causes the little tab that appears on alignment changes to overflow...

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I marked Ellen with TacHUD and after she vanished, TacHUD still had a faint triangle where she was. Does the triangle ever fade away completely? If it doesn't, it should. If it does, maybe it's a wee bit too slow?

I think it was mentioned in Discord that transponders could be recycled. I tried, and it can't (flashes "212121"). It would be really nice if there was a special, non-inventory place for them on the inventory screen.

The repair-everything dialog still isn't triggered if you have the PPCU in your possession. The checks for repair-everything shouldn't include the PPCU.

This was mentioned to Chaosian and he said he was going to look into it but for posterity: when I tased everyone on the roof, K15/R25 (I forget which) said something to the effect of "you managed to pacify most of them." I felt the dialog was underwhelming compared to CG1 where they say "you managed to capture all of them" and they say it like they're ultra impressed. It would be nice if they also reference your performance compared to CG1.

The conversation manager dialog about the "Icer" feels cut off. I choose the power plant option and R9 ended the conversation with "good point" and that was the end of it. I figured there would be more to be said about it. You know, freezing underground and doom if it fails. That should set off all kinds of warnings for the Consortium.

"Speaking with Pawn 32" doesn't clear after the conversation is finished. I went with the path of trying to convince her she's been mislead and mislead about the Prophecy, if that matters.

Mouse wheel spinning feels reversed. Mouse wheels usually behave the same way as reading does: left to right, top to bottom. In this case, trying to scroll down should cause the selection to move left to right instead of right to left. I don't know if that's something I got turned around in my controls or if it defaults like that. If it defaults like that, strongly suggest it be reversed by default.

It would be really nice to have an ability like Oblivion/Skyrim that allows you to drag stuff. Not just bodies either. I was trying to get down the Tower 3 shaft on the roof to the park but the path is obstructed by two containers. I didn't want to recycle them because I was full. If the grab function was in the game, I would have pulled them towards me moving them out of the way so I could go down the duct leaving them for later.

"Dirty TT" still isn't explained. I think there should be a "What is dirty TT?" conversation available where R25 quickly explains it. Doesn't even have to be a full conversation, just a statement in reply. I mean, I know what TT is because of background dialogs with GreatBird; however, I have no idea what the significance of "dirty" is in this context. It's said like it is common parlance.

The Voice follow up conversation manager is very broken:
1) Load save:

6) Went by door to hotel lobby.
7) R25 dialog triggered about engineering system but...
8) Issue #2: There is no new conversations in the conversation manager.
9) Issue #3: K15 says fine, don't talk to me.

I'm a technical designer for the Tower currently working on bug fixes for the coming 1.2 release. It seems that you uncovered one of the 'unusual objects' in the game, one that was inside an underwater maze. You posted a screenshot, but it seems like you couldn't do anything with it? That suggests to me a bug of some sort, because you can get a small missions, and use those objects to your benefit. Can you describe to me what you did when you found the object? Could you not interact with it at all? You just got the '2121212121212121212121' message?
Had you been saving and loading your game beforehand? Could you provide us with a save file? If there is a bug, we could nail down the exact problem in our developing environment.

Thanks for any response,
I'll post this message on both the forums, and in your Private Messages so you can find it easier.

In the area with the bad performance before, that's mostly fixed but:
1) There's one wall that appears as you approach it then disappears again as you get close/pass through it. 0:23
2) Outside, there's something wrong with the storm. Just see the placeholder texture out there. Or is that supposed to represent a shield of some kind? 0:30
3) Inside, there's three spots that are purple. 0:45 & 0:59
4) There's a gap in a wall you can see through. 1:11
5) The button in the duct at the end doesn't work. 1:20https://youtu.be/S47EXXdSLnE

I kept going after taking this video only to discover there were no hostiles in the lobby. Before freaking out about it, I decided to start all over to verify, and, well, there's a lot of text spammed on the left side of the screen. When searching for Odin (whom I knew was missing), I ran (literally) into a lot of invisible walls in the lobby. Those invisible walls are primarily why I uploaded the video...
1) I could not find squad_leader_F although it says he was placed at 5:38.
2) Invisible walls:
-8:32
-9:55, same spot again at 10:33, and again at 12:23
-10:56, another spot adjacent to this one at 11:04, both spots again in the opposite direction at 11:16https://youtu.be/a9ODNc12ehc

Pretty obvious in the video above but red text is nearly impossible to read when recording at 30fps. This snapshot is taken from the original recording paused in MPC-HC:
Can read the other colors easily...not red because compression algorithms destroy it.